This is the backyard I inherited after buying my 1882 row house in the Historic Pullman District. Bounded by two broken down chain link fences and a white vinyl sided garage, the yard was graced with a concrete stoop with black pipe railings.

A very narrow concrete sidewalk buckled and heaved its way down the middle of a weed patch that had simply been mowed twice a year.

Twenty years of neglect had left me nothing beyond some reasonably fertile clay soil.